We Need More Drama in Gaming to Elevate the Medium

"When you look at the world of entertainment outside of gaming, there are many genres, but the most popular in film, television and literature always seems to just be basic, run-of-the-mill drama." | Explosion.com

Not to single out ME, but a lot of the drama in games is forced. It doesn't flow naturally like in a good movie or TV show.

This may be due to the nature of the medium, given that most people just complain when cut-scenes take too long to get through. Xenosaga for instance, I wouldn't say the drama was forced, however it had long and plentiful cut-scenes which broke up the game play enough to notice them.

It also doesn't help that some of the people writing the stories and scripts for some of these games aren't really equipped to write scripts, and often times the script seems to be forced into game play mechanics to add features and such.

Except TV, books, and movies are passive experiences, in video game you are the protagonist and driving the narrative forwards. Also, player choice is something that we haven't perfected, but it's still something no other medium is able to provide.

Gameplay isn't unimportant, some games like Dark Souls and FTL are amazing, and gameplay is how the character interacts with the world AND the story. However, saying gameplay is inherently more important than storytelling is something I strongly disagree with.

I think that finding a way to work gameplay into a more realistic, dramatic plot is going to be the difficult part.

A game like Heavy Rain did a lot of that where you were just walking around the house, doing normal stuff and it was kind of interesting. I know a lot of gamers were kind of laughing at like, hold a button to drink orange juice and that kind of thing, but it was still an interesting concept.

Just adding more character-to-character interaction and personal storylines will help out a lot.

I'm not sure we'll ever move beyond the realm of WE GOT GUNS, SAVE THE WORLD, but it can get a little bit more engaging.